Calgary International Airport II

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by YYCFlier

Except WS has essentially cancelled remaining 787 orders. So their fleet is 7 frames.

Maybe Westjet will try another order once things settle.

I don't think Boeing would oppose it. Especially as Boeing whittles down their 787 backlog.

[hehehe]

Originally Posted by YYCFlier

Except WS has essentially cancelled remaining 787 orders. So their fleet is 7 frames. See https://www.flightglobal.com/strategy/ho...westjet-back-to-its-roots/150173.article.

von Hoensbroech is basically saying "being a widebody operator isn't a strategic priority and we'll keep doing it as long as it makes us money." To me this puts the entire international expansion in doubt.

I don't think this is really to the detriment of YYC though. We were never going to be some huge international base with flights everywhere. It was always going to be a few winter flights to Europe and a bunch of European leisure in the summer. 20, or even ten frames based in YYC was probably never realistic.

If YYC-NRT or maybe ICN is a profitable venture (I'd assume so if AC ran it for ten years?) then someone will start it.

[LO 044]

As mentioned on Airliners.net and Travelweek, it looks like KL and AMS will indeed become more of a player in WestJet's new small long-haul strategy.

https://www.travelweek.ca/news/new-agent...jet-westjet-vacations-travel-trade-expo/

[Calfan12]

Originally Posted by YYCFlier

Except WS has essentially cancelled remaining 787 orders. So their fleet is 7 frames. See https://www.flightglobal.com/strategy/ho...westjet-back-to-its-roots/150173.article.

von Hoensbroech is basically saying "being a widebody operator isn't a strategic priority and we'll keep doing it as long as it makes us money." To me this puts the entire international expansion in doubt.

What the WestJet CEO saids is 1 thing. And what their plans are & plan to do is another story.

Will see, changes are still possible as we all have seen since the Covid pandemic era . Things are changing a lot.

Even without more 787's, Calgary's WestJet Hub will continue to remain strong. And with Air Canada remaining stagnant at YYC makes WestJet, Lynx, Flair & eventually soon Canada Jetlines all happy.

[Calfan12]

Originally Posted by thewave46

Maybe Westjet will try another order once things settle.

I don't think Boeing would oppose it. Especially as Boeing whittles down their 787 backlog.

Good points & I agree. Should be interesting what WestJet plans are moving forward for the next few years.

1 thing is WestJet likes to play it safe. Which means WestJet will take its International expansion slowly to try to make it work as best as possible. And Europe is likely where their focus will be.

Plus with only a total of 7 787 planes in thier fleet, WestJet 787's flights will continue to be centred around mostly Calgary YYC, Vancouver YVR & Toronto YYZ in Canada.

[hehehe]

Originally Posted by Calfan12

What the WestJet CEO saids is 1 thing. And what their plans are & plan to do is another story.

Will see, changes are still possible as we all have seen since the Covid pandemic era . Things are changing a lot.

Even without more 787's, Calgary's WestJet Hub will continue to remain strong. And with Air Canada remaining stagnant at YYC makes WestJet, Lynx, Flair & eventually soon Canada Jetlines all happy.

I highly doubt WS will get rid of its 787's. They wouldn't start AMS in the winter if they were just going to phase everything out in a year or so.

[Coldrsx]

Singapore for $625... damn.

https://yycdeals.com/calgary-to-singapore-625-roundtrip

[Calfan12]

Japan's ZIPAIR a low cost / leisurely airline is using their Boeing 787 planes & starting up Tokyo Narita NRT- San Jose SJC, California route this December 2022 few times weekly & it is SJC’s 1st Asian nonstop flights since 2020.
https://simpleflying.com/japan-zipair-san-jose-only-transpacific-route/amp/

San Jose SJC is a similar size city like Calgary YYC with a population of 1million + & is a smaller market like YYC too.

(If) Japan’s ZIPAIR were to start up a route in Canada, YYC would be good fit for them ,Leisurely.

Originally Posted by Calfan12

San Jose SJC is a similar size city like Calgary YYC with a population of 1million + & is a smaller market like YYC too.

(If) Japan’s ZIPAIR were to start up a route in Canada, YYC would be good fit for them ,Leisurely.

Oh lord. SJC metro is 2 million, i.e. 500,000 more than Calgary, but really they can draw from the whole bay area which is nearly 8 million.

There is perhaps merit in discussing the viability of YYC for an Asian LCC but your reasoning based solely on population holds zero water, unless you want to also say a "good fit for them" could also be the similarly sized North American metros of MKE, JAX, PVD, MKE, ORF, MEM, SDF, SLC, and MSY.

Edmonton and Calgary metros are pretty much the same and some days we have 8 transatlantic flights and they have 1. Why is that? It's almost as if citing population is meaningless.

[zahav]

The AC route to NRT was kind of iffy to be honest. It was one of the last routes flying the 767 (they wouldn't use the oldest obsolete aircraft on high profile routes), and I believe the route technicall started in Toronto, and was their "direct flight" to Narita, since AC flew to Haneda from YYZ. I obviously don't know what the flight breakdown was, and what % were actually Toronto people going to NRT vs. YYZ to YYC, and then all YYC traffic onward to NRT. Not necesssarily an indication of the health of the route, but didn't make it seem strong either. Time will tell if AC sees demand to bring it back, never say never.

"Direct" but non-stop routes are not nearly as popular as they once were. I think YYZ only has the Geneva flight which stops in YUL, but they used to have HKG flights thru YVR, SYD flights through YVR, NRT through YYC, and at least GVA thru YUL if not more. I am not counting flights that go to two international destinations, only flights that have a domestic leg and an international leg on the same flight #. It always annoyed me that YYZ called themselves a six continent airport lol, I could have bought it if the stop in YVR was just a technical or fuel stop, but the flight to YVR was a proper flight in itself, and had the same flight #. And pax had to clear customs in YVR before reboarding to YYZ. So in my mind, direct or not, Sydney should never have been counted as destination out of YYZ (ditto with NRT, GVA). Now with something like Royal Jordanian, I couid accept it, since you can't fly between YYZ and YUL. But still, clearing customs in YUL totally takes me out of calling it a route for YYZ, but it makes more sense that SYD did. LOL ok rant over

The advantage of the flight originating in YYZ was to
a) rotate the frame through YYZ
b) provide midday cargo capacity and pods for YYZ-YYC, which they still do now with whatever mix of 788/789/77L/77W/333
c) The 767's seat count was a much better fit than the 788, of which they only have 8 that were better used elsewhere
d) Other operational advantages

[Zmonkey]

Originally Posted by thenoflyzone

^ I wonder when WS will announce a high density 787 configuration. If they are truly going back to their LCC roots, then it only makes sense to have a few 400 seater 787s for the trunk routes in winter. (Cuba, PVR, CUN, PUJ, MCO, etc)

I think its inevitable really....

In the summer with a high density plane they could offer cheap fares to London, Paris, Rome and a couple other Euro cities out of YYC. Fill there planes connecting in and out YYC to boot.

I agree, I think its coming.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Zmonkey

In the summer with a high density plane they could offer cheap fares to London, Paris, Rome and a couple other Euro cities out of YYC. Fill there planes connecting in and out YYC to boot.

I agree, I think its coming.

I hope they don't reconfigure it. The WestJet 787 is already a high density configuration with a very small premium cabin. It only has 16 international business class seats. The in-flight service is actually quite good.

The logical destinations for leisure/business customers would be London, Paris, Amsterdam.

The logical leisure destinations would be Rome, Copenhagen, and Lisbon. The reason I suggest those three is they have cruise ship ports and WestJet can likely make deals with the cruise lines to fill them with passengers connecting from the US.

[casper]

Originally Posted by zahav

The AC route to NRT was kind of iffy to be honest. It was one of the last routes flying the 767 (they wouldn't use the oldest obsolete aircraft on high profile routes), and I believe the route technicall started in Toronto, and was their "direct flight" to Narita, since AC flew to Haneda from YYZ. I obviously don't know what the flight breakdown was, and what % were actually Toronto people going to NRT vs. YYZ to YYC, and then all YYC traffic onward to NRT. Not necesssarily an indication of the health of the route, but didn't make it seem strong either. Time will tell if AC sees demand to bring it back, never say never.

"Direct" but non-stop routes are not nearly as popular as they once were. I think YYZ only has the Geneva flight which stops in YUL, but they used to have HKG flights thru YVR, SYD flights through YVR, NRT through YYC, and at least GVA thru YUL if not more. I am not counting flights that go to two international destinations, only flights that have a domestic leg and an international leg on the same flight #. It always annoyed me that YYZ called themselves a six continent airport lol, I could have bought it if the stop in YVR was just a technical or fuel stop, but the flight to YVR was a proper flight in itself, and had the same flight #. And pax had to clear customs in YVR before reboarding to YYZ. So in my mind, direct or not, Sydney should never have been counted as destination out of YYZ (ditto with NRT, GVA). Now with something like Royal Jordanian, I couid accept it, since you can't fly between YYZ and YUL. But still, clearing customs in YUL totally takes me out of calling it a route for YYZ, but it makes more sense that SYD did. LOL ok rant over

I have done the GVA flight only once. It is weird, you do all the customs stuff in Montreal then go through security and wait to get back on.

The SYD one is less surprising. I have don the YYZ-YVR segment a few times and it does have a lot of Australians on the flight. Or at least a large number of passengers that speak their form of English.

Originally Posted by Zmonkey

In the summer with a high density plane they could offer cheap fares to London, Paris, Rome and a couple other Euro cities out of YYC. Fill there planes connecting in and out YYC to boot.

I agree, I think its coming.

Or they could just fill the J seats and make more money with the existing configuration, if the fare buckets for last night's full J cabin to CDG is any indication.

I'm not sure where the idea came from that WS wants to make less money with the Dreamliners than they already do, but it makes zero sense.

[Alexcaban]

Originally Posted by zahav

The AC route to NRT was kind of iffy to be honest. It was one of the last routes flying the 767 (they wouldn't use the oldest obsolete aircraft on high profile routes), and I believe the route technicall started in Toronto, and was their "direct flight" to Narita, since AC flew to Haneda from YYZ. I obviously don't know what the flight breakdown was, and what % were actually Toronto people going to NRT vs. YYZ to YYC, and then all YYC traffic onward to NRT. Not necesssarily an indication of the health of the route, but didn't make it seem strong either. Time will tell if AC sees demand to bring it back, never say never.

"Direct" but non-stop routes are not nearly as popular as they once were. I think YYZ only has the Geneva flight which stops in YUL, but they used to have HKG flights thru YVR, SYD flights through YVR, NRT through YYC, and at least GVA thru YUL if not more. I am not counting flights that go to two international destinations, only flights that have a domestic leg and an international leg on the same flight #. It always annoyed me that YYZ called themselves a six continent airport lol, I could have bought it if the stop in YVR was just a technical or fuel stop, but the flight to YVR was a proper flight in itself, and had the same flight #. And pax had to clear customs in YVR before reboarding to YYZ. So in my mind, direct or not, Sydney should never have been counted as destination out of YYZ (ditto with NRT, GVA). Now with something like Royal Jordanian, I couid accept it, since you can't fly between YYZ and YUL. But still, clearing customs in YUL totally takes me out of calling it a route for YYZ, but it makes more sense that SYD did. LOL ok rant over

Air Canada has not operated YYZ-YUL-GVA since March 2019.
AC even stopped YYZ-YUL-MXP.

[YYCFlier]

Originally Posted by ace.yyc

Or they could just fill the J seats and make more money with the existing configuration, if the fare buckets for last night's full J cabin to CDG is any indication.

I'm not sure where the idea came from that WS wants to make less money with the Dreamliners than they already do, but it makes zero sense.

Agreed. There's no way WS is reconfiguring the 789s. It's a very small fleet with a very small premium cabin and is already leisure friendly. WS is more of a hybrid carrier - not quite full service, not quite LCC. The 737s all have a PY cabin that is basically the same as NA J narrowbody service and the premium service isn't going anywhere. In fact, I bet they make some decent profits on these products.

Once the Sunwing fleet is absorbed, it will probably go to Swoop.

[YYCFlier]

Originally Posted by zahav

The AC route to NRT was kind of iffy to be honest. It was one of the last routes flying the 767 (

They ran it on the 788 once the 767 was phased out. If I recall, the mountain parks are very popular with Japanese tourists - some would fly into/out of YYC and drive through and fly in/out of YVR. YVR has three carriers serving TYO (all NRT at the moment). I could see a leisure carrier doing YYC seasonally, even WS if it ever got more frames (seems unlikely now).

[hehehe]

AC seems to be dropping YYC-YZF for the winter. YCD is down to one daily as well, YYC-YEG down to 5x daily, YLW is down to 2x daily and YKA is down to 1x daily (this winter).

[Johnny Aussie]

^ YQR, YXE and YYJ also down to 2 daily only.
All of these routes are being replaced with DH4s instead of CR9s as well

Also a transborder winter update for US carriers:

Approx 9 daily

United - 4 daily (DEN 2, ORD 1, IAH 1)
Delta - 2 daily (MSP 1, SLC 1)
American - 2 daily (DFW)
Alaska - 6 weekly (SEA)